Elated is not a word heard often due to the state of the world, but that is how MIKE would describe his current tour experience. It’s been 6 months since we last caught up with the ultra-prolific worldwide rapper, and he is back on the road performing some of the songs from Burning Desire and Pinball with some of the people closest to him and loyal fans as the company for this expedition.
MIKE sat down backstage to begin rolling his joint for this conversation. He is in a different place than he was when we last saw him in November. Coming off the release of his collaboration with Tony Seltzer, he is nearing the end of the Somebody Fine Me Trouble Tour. Which got its name after he heard the 2010 song by Bola Johnson, “I was listening to that song, and I thought it was a super cheeky title to a song,” MIKE started. “I’m not sure exactly what he’s talking about, but it also sounds like he’s talking about some woman in his life.” This tour wasn’t met with trouble from women yet but it was met with numerous unfortunate events and nosebleeds leading to comedic stories he told backstage at The Independent in San Francisco. At this point, MIKE expressed he has been living what his college experience might have been, it is everything school is without the anxiety of 8 am classes.
“Music and touring kind of became for me my college experience,” MIKE began reflecting on being a college freshman. “I remember I had got into my first year, I ended up doing less than a year in college, I remember when I first had to enroll. It was hell.”
The apprehension he felt from school stemmed from his fear of commitment, part of the reason he has stayed an independent artist for so long. The only thing he has committed to for this long is his music, and it is paying off. Before deciding to leave school, he took a picture on his computer’s webcam and remembered seeing the sadness in his face. From that day, he never turned back.
Moving forward in every aspect of his life, he released music that soundtracked his feelings of sadness, leading to the albums that aided in so many people’s self-discovery, like 2018s War in My Pen and 2019s Tears of Joy. When he was making those albums, he was part of the [sLUms]. Collective; a group of 6 kids trying to find their footing in the world through their music. At the time MIKE was about 19 years old, and today as a 25-year-old, he thinks the 2017 version of himself would look at himself today and be “gassed”.
“I just felt like it could happen maybe, but I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t super sure,” he started. “So when shit started kind of flipping. Even now, I’m not super sure.”
Not much has changed about MIKE since he was 19 running around with his [sLUms]. friends. Even amid his newfound success and fame, he has to maintain an air of normalcy along with the abnormalities that come along with his new life stage. One thing that has always been consistent is having a supportive team of people around him.
For the last three years on tour, MIKE has been accompanied by artists like Anysia Kym, 454, and Niontay, three people who have added all of their different sounds to curate a tour that is enjoyable for all people in attendance, even the casual fans. Niontay is a rapper and producer from Kissimmee, Florida who met MIKE through their mutual friend and a shared love for a Parisian fashion brand.
“We met through my twin, Sideshow,” Niontay started. “Sideshow was like ‘You gotta meet the homie MIKE. He love Zaza and Margiela, y’all niggas twins.’” From then on, the two bonded over their love for clothes and weed; becoming fast friends and frequent collaborators.
By 2017, he knew rap was the route he wanted to take after realizing being 5’8 wouldn’t necessarily get him into the league. From there he put the ball down and picked up the mic, with that realization, the help of his engineer, Ben and a blackout drunk night at an Airbnb, it was like a spirit was calling him to rap, and in this haze, he did just that.
“That night, I was just locked in,” Niontay said. “The next morning we woke up and listened to the shit we made, and Ben was looking at me like, ‘Bruh, you good as fuck. Why you don’t rap no more?’”
The experience from that one night helped him realize he should go back to rapping full-time. Since then, he has given fans two EPs and one full-length album in three years, all with the help of his 10k family. From his various collaborations with MIKE and showing up on Anysia Kym’s Soliloquy, joining the 10k team was the right decision to make in his musical career.
Initially, when Niontay first made his move up north, he was interested in a career other than being a rapper. Upon moving from Florida to New York, he was signed to model and started seeing his face in various campaigns online, and while making this trek for his new life he lost the notes he started and rap found him all over again.
While listening to Niontay’s music it can raise eyebrows as to how he can fit in with the music coming from MIKE, Anysia, Jadasea, Salimata and others. Anysia Kym’s music has a high-energy electronic feel that plays with feelings of yearning. MIKE and Salimata incorporate soulful samples from R&B and Niontay is the wildcard that fits in with everyone. But when all the artists come together, everything sounds like it is of the same world, and the people there affirm that’s what makes it special. The connection between these individual artists is unique because they’ve recognized how they all come together as one unit.
“We all, for the most part, was raised by the same type of characters and [we had] the same morals and principles instilled in us growing up,” Niontay said reflecting on the people around him. “It’s like we all the same nigga, but we got slightly different interests in a way.”
All of these varying interests are apparent but they come together in ways that make sense to members, listeners and everyone viewing. With all these different people making different music coming together, everyone is still learning about their roles in the project. Looking at his career, MIKE realizes his role is to create work that people connect with, which is the perception of the entire mission of 10k.
Niontay is doing the same while listening to the lyrics of his break-out song, “Thank Allah,” he’s painting the picture of his life at the time the song was made. “I made that a year or two years before Dontay’s Inferno came out,” he said. “That song for real just a whole period in my life, a two-year span where that was the main piece of Dontay’s Inferno.”
One thing MIKE and Niontay have in common, besides the foundation for their friendship, is their ability to create music that people connect with in their personal lives. In MIKE’s most recent releases, 2023’s Burning Desire and 2024’s Pinball with Tony Seltzer he went from detailing his yearning for life through his songs during the day to creating music with Tony Shhnow, Earl Sweatshirt, Niontay and more at the studio with Tony.
MIKE’s music, and the entirety of 10k, show the duality of every member involved. Pinball was a deviation from the traditional beat selection and subject matter that fans are used to. Here with Tony Seltzer, he is making what he described as “turnt shit.” This back and forth helped him hone his craft to make songs that connect to his fans on a different level.
“It was cool because it felt like some type of rap training, or rap camp,” he said. “All the skills I would practice at Tony shit, I would come back and apply to the Burning Desire shit, that’s how I got songs like ‘Do You Believe?’, ‘African Sex Freak Fantasy’ or ‘Mussel Beach.’”
That night MIKE, Taka, Niontay and El Cousteau felt like the San Francisco show was worthy of a surprise performance of “Mussel Beach,” and the crowd very much appreciated the gift. El Cousteau rapped about being a “janky ass nigga,” Niontay rapped about fucking a girl and maintaining a cordial relationship afterward and MIKE concluded as he rapped about running out of one-dollar bills in the strip club and putting an eighth in the stripper’s thong, furthering the versatility in his music.
Beyond “Mussel Beach,” from Burning Desire, one of the standout songs on Pinball was “2K24 Tour,” the perfect song to describe what they are doing now. The grand finale of the album has the makings of the ending of a triumphant movie and was made in anticipation of their current experience, touring from Europe to America in less than six months. “That was the most fun I ever had making a song,” Niontay said, reflecting on the creative process.
It all goes back to the collaborative inner workings of 10k and the people around. While making this song, Taka, MIKE’s DJ and his “enforcer,” as he is described on “Zap!” helped create the melody for the infectious chorus. Regarding Niontay’s verse, the song goes from the feeling as you ride around listening to it with your friends to the rush one can get when played in the club. “2k24 Tour” perfectly describes where they are in life, performing on tour, going into strip clubs and the uncertainty of not knowing if someone loves you in the name of love or lust, and it all just came to them.
From what it looks like, things will continue coming their way. MIKE, 454, Niontay and El Cousteau have completed the tour closing out at New York’s Webster Hall, the night was filled with fans, family and nothing but love. Trouble has yet to find them thus far, but the show will never stop, “when I hear somebody find me trouble, it’s like find me a trouble that’s strong enough to stop what we do,” MIKE said.
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